Thought I'd drop you a line to tell you a bit about two things in Leeds I am involved in.

The first is a new congregation looking to start in september 2002, but has been meeting for a while and will be spending the summer having a really good look at exactly what church is. There is not so much an age-range we are targeting as a style, but obviously one follows the other to some extent and the expected group would be 20s and 30s with some forward thinking older adults and more independent youth. We're still in the process of finding out exactly where we think God wants us to meet, what time, what content etc., but are going to try to hold the following dynamics in tension:

1. Suitable for both Christians and Non-Christians at every level
2. A people who are Holy but also Relevant in society today
3. Professionally run, but also dependant on God
4. Intimate Worship, but also expounding God's Word
5. Different levels of buy-in, but also community and accountability
6. Strong leadership, but also every member ministry
   

I guess this will be quite a challenge, which is one of the reasons why we are interested in finding out about the Rough Guide resources of TG that would help a new group think through this process. We will be continuing a cell-based work over the summer among our own friends and workplaces, but hope to spend some time meeting together to see how the above principles can be realised and reading what the New Testament says about church and identifying teams to release peoples gifts. We're very much looking forward to September, but the work starts now.

The second area is a web-site: www.engage.uk.com. This started as a direct ministry of the group above and we still plan to use it to beck up the work the new congregation is doing. There are three main areas:

1. an interactive tactile calendar which gives details of future and past meetings and holds handouts from past talks in html format
2. a cell network, where cell leaders and cell members have different access levels, allowing free communication in the group - message boards, prayer points, location of next cell meeting etc.
3. personal pages (still growing) with articles, a discipleship course, etc
   All this is coordinated by an email provider to link everyone together and allow the different access levels. The site is basically finished, except for a few glitches and the fact that it's full potential is not immediately obvious to a browser. The big change at the moment is the hope of expanding it up to link several (no theoretical limit) churches and congregations in Leeds with their own calendars and cells (negotiated by an email login) but with a shared 'personal' section with articles and resources for across the city. There would also be a 'youth' side to the site, linking the different
   you groups together and resourcing a city-wide youth event, with web pages to chill-out, meditate, etc.